Three-Fifths
Relief
By Remi Kanazi
05 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
I guess
the people at Yahoo didn't have their racism detectors on earlier this
week. On August 29th an image appeared on Yahoo of a white woman and
man trudging through chest deep water after "finding bread and
soda from a local grocery store." Huh. They just "found"
bread and soda? Like little Goldie Locks "found" porridge
after skipping through the forest? The next day Yahoo gives us an image
of a black boy after just "looting a grocery store." I hate
to break it to the heads of Yahoo but even if you didn't mean to do
it, it is still racism.
Not surprisingly,
the people at Yahoo took off the picture of the "white finders,"
because Yahoo would never plan out racism. Maybe their subconscious
did it for them? The media can't build up the poor black people to be
ravage beasts, foaming from the mouth looting everything in sight, from
bread to medicine to water, if we have these other images floating about.
The media has to maintain its "fairness" and "objectivity."
Goddamn it if Walmart's insurance doesn't cover the diapers or food
that damn crying baby needed, or the diabetes pills that 82 year old
woman whorishly craved. We can't taint it with picture perfect, racist
images of white people just "trying to survive."
We haven't treated
black people like three-fifths a person in a whilewell not if
their rich and republican. As Condi Rice looks at the impoverished refugees
with the, my-mommy- didn't-teach-me-about-this-during-piano-lessons
stare, we realize it will take her more than a week to get "down
and dirty" with the people of her own race.
It's not as though
the people of New Orleans are asking for aid in small unmarked bills.
They just want to get out of New Orleans. Why didn't they get out in
the first place? Well that's an effect of being poor and black in a
country that doesn't give a damn about you. Who cares if the death toll
tops 10,000, just as long as Bush gives 10.5 billion in aid two weeks
from now. He can say, "I tried," or "in hindsight."
People in America love to say in hindsight as a code for: yes we screwed
you, but we're going to try and put a good face on it anyway.
It's ok now because
Bush can send in the National Guard reinforcements. Wait. No. Those
reinforcements are in a hurricane that Bush created in the Middle East
called Operation Bomb Brown People. Who cares in the Bush administration
anyway? They already cut the funding that would have helped the levies
from breaking, and they got the white people out that will be voting
for them in the midterm elections. Oh yes, I forgot about the compassion
of George Bush. We could have used a bit of that compassion before the
hurricane hit and killed possibly tens of thousands of people. We could
have used that compassion in Iraq, Afghanistan, and before his new budget
cut funding on those poor black Americans that are now suffering third
world conditions in the most advanced nation in the world.
It's not as though
the Bush administration couldn't have done more. They could have sent
the relief earlier as they did for Jeb Bush in Florida before the 2004
election. They could have listened to the cries and call, but they chose
not to. Yes, now they're scrambling, just as they did after the start
of Tsunami relief when they initially vowed to donate just enough cash
for the Tsunami victims to send the US thank you postcards.
We shouldn't be
surprised how this administration is treating the poor and downtrodden
in their time of crisis because this how they've always treated them.
Scoffing at their necessity of health care and vital social programs,
rewriting bankruptcy laws that help keep poor people poor, and keeping
them at arms length in an "ownership" society is just what
the neocon doctors of the Bush administration ordered. It's why it's
not so surprising to see this administration rape their own people and
leave them stranded. Hell if you're going to rampage and destroy other
countries, you might as well spread the love to your own suffering citizens.